


The Day No One Died in the City

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Banter, Brotherly Love, Crying Dean, Dreams, Drinking, Gen, Reapers, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 06:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10825647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: Dean meets an old frenemy in a mysteriously deathless New York City.





	The Day No One Died in the City

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [День, когда в городе никто не умер](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13269054) by [TModestova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TModestova/pseuds/TModestova)



_Tell me, Dean. You can’t possibly have believed you could kill Death. You merely spilled a bottle of ink into a pool of ink and it is you who will come out black…_

Dean jerked awake, hand closing over the steel .38 caliber reassurance under his pillow. His hand slowly relaxed as he felt the comfort of memory foam cradling him, and realized that he was home, and all was quiet, and he had been dreaming.

He couldn’t remember about what, but it didn’t matter: there were nightmares, waking and sleeping; nothing that could come after him in either state was any worse than what he had already faced, or what might kill him tomorrow. The only thing he didn’t really understand was how oddly comforting that thought was. His heart lifted as he thought of the choices immediately in front of him: go back to sleep. Get up, drink some coffee, see if Sam (Sam! Still alive, still with him) was awake. Find a case, or not. Stay in bed all day with the stash of weird old skin mags the Men of Letters had left behind in the 60s (the appeal of naked women was timeless). Go kill something. Or even better, don’t. It all sounded pretty good, free as he was now from the Mark. 

He crossed “go back to sleep” off the list as wakefulness, threaded through with unease, planted itself firmly in him. The unease was from his dream. Coffee should fix that right up. He grabbed his robe and trudged to the Bunker’s kitchen.

He sniffed gratefully as he paused in the doorway; the scent of coffee brewing coffee greeted him, as did Sam, with “Hey,” as he walked in and grabbed a mug.

Sam was peering intently at his laptop, and after Dean grunted a greeting, he said, “So get this.” 

Dean shuffled “find a case” to the top of his mental list. Sam continued.

“There’s this big story sweeping the internet—more rumors than fact right now. But as far as I can tell, no one has died in New York City in the past eight and a half hours.”

“So?” Dean slurped his coffee and leaned on the counter, ignoring the new flare of anxiety left over from dreaming. Or just… left over. From his life. “Can’t be the first time that’s happened. How often do people usually die there?”

“About every nine minutes, actually. Numbers vary, and it depends on how many of the boroughs you expand out to, but about 150 people per day.”

“Huh. I guess out of eight million people, that’s not so bad. Isn’t that good news, at least for New Yorkers?”

“People seem to think so—some are joking about moving their cancer-patient loved ones into New York so they can’t die. There are memes. But also, maybe not joking. That’s what’s so weird about it. I mean, _no one_ has died. There are people in hospice who were expected to go any minute, coma patients whose family pulled the plug—they’re all still breathing. It apparently started at midnight last night.”

Dean sighed and poured more coffee. “Sounds like our kind of gig, all right.”

* * * 

Dean knew Sam was surprised that he got on the plane with no fuss, and drank only as much as he might drink at the bar on a relaxed evening. Sure, his head buzzed for a minute as they picked up speed on the runway, and his heartbeat picked up a little when he imagined a demon tearing the door off the plane or some such, after they reached cruising altitude. That was when he ordered his first drink. But as the stupid-expensive cheap whisky burned his throat, he realized why. Sure, there was a good chance he’d die, but one, wasn’t there always? And two, so what? It wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before.

Maybe, he wondered, as from the corner of his eye he watched Sam try not to stare at him incredulously as he propped the tiny crappy pillow against the window and settled in for a nap, this is what happens when you kill Death. _Bitch,_ he thought experimentally, as if someone might hear it. _I killed you with your own scythe._

Silence, under the dull roar of the plane’s engine, filled his brain, and he drifted off to sleep to dream of miles upon miles of deathless skyscrapers, towering over dark alleys teeming with endless life.

* * * 

He woke in New York a couple of hours later, barely even hung over. He’d have to see if he could get used to this business of air travel—the trip would have taken 20 hours in the car, even with the way he drove, and the Day Without Death (their fellow travelers were talking about it and calling it that) would be over before they got there, if it _was_ only a day.

It took Sam longer than he expected to ask the question. He kept looking at Dean, trying to figure out this new guy who wasn’t afraid to fly, who barely blinked at the prospect of going on a hunt without Baby and her well-stocked trunk (though he snorted with disgust at the plastic piece of crap rental car as he tossed his duffel in the back seat). They were joining the line of bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving La Guardia when Sam finally asked.

“Do you think this is because of… you know. Killing Death?”

“I think the Darkness is because of that. This? I don’t know. Seems like… kind of the opposite of her style, so far.”

“The Darkness has a style?”

“Well, yeah. She eats souls; she doesn’t save them.”

“I’m not sure there’s any saving going on here, Dean,” Sam said. He was frowning, hesitating before each response. Dean wasn’t sure what this mood was in him. He didn’t seem as upset as Dean might have expected, at least about them fucking up the world.

“I read up some more while you were sleeping,” Sam continued. “This is international news now. A drug dealer shot a gang member square in the chest, point blank, a couple of hours ago. He was declared DOA at the hospital, because… he had to be. Giant hole in his chest. But he’s not dead. Still alive, breathing and everything. Doctors can’t explain it.”

“Sounds like something we need to see.”

* * * 

They saw it. They saw other things. Miracles, really, except how long could they last? Or… should they? Dean had dealt his share of death in two-plus decades of hunting. He even enjoyed it sometimes. But—and here he turned sharply away from the memories of Hell—he’d never had any stomach for suffering.

Sam, the sensitive one, the one who wouldn’t let him fry ants with a magnifying glass when they’d been kids—he didn’t see it. There was this odd… distance from it that Dean could perceive. The patients who should be dead—gunshot victims, cancer patients trapped within the walls of their dying breath—they didn’t moan in pain, and most slept quietly, but could Sam not feel the _wrongness?_

Why was Dean the one now, somehow?

Sam and Dean had worked so hard to get to the city before midnight, before the Day Without Death was over. But it became Days.

There were no clues. No one knew anything. They knocked on doors and people answered; Dean didn’t have to break out his lock picks even once. No one smelled sulfur or “noticed anything strange” or sent Sam and Dean to a friend of a victim who might have a grudge… there were no grudges, really. It wasn’t a New York City, or even a world, Dean recognized.

No one died. That was all.

Dean began to have strange dreams. Everyone he’d ever known who died —there were so, so many; it killed him how many—wandered aimlessly past him in a vaguely-drawn, otherwise deserted cityscape. He couldn’t speak in the dream, but they all turned their heads to look at him as though he’d called their names. Bobby paused for a long, long moment, wearing his listening face, staring at Dean as if Dean were telling him all the facts of the most vital and interesting case ever. He listened to nothing, long enough for Dean to have told him everything on the epic novel-length list of things troubling him, if he could have spoken. He wanted desperately to speak, to ask Bobby if he was OK where he was, to say how much he missed him. But then Bobby was gone, leaving a trail of cold, heartsick disapproval, and others came and left the same way—Mom, Dad, Kevin, Charlie. Others. The thirteen-year-old boy Dean couldn’t save in one of his first hunts, when he was thirteen himself.

“Seen enough, Dean?”

Dean woke with a start in the shitty hotel room that was nonetheless one of the most expensive places they’d ever stayed. He looked across the aisle expecting to see Sam on the other bed with his laptop.

Instead, he saw Death.

Dean scrambled to his feet and across the room until his back was against the wall. His fingers clutched at it, desperate to sense reality. The slightly greasy feel of the peeling wallpaper under his fingers, the faint scent of mold, and the sound of his blood rushing through his ears in time with the wild pounding of his heart were as real as could be.

“I killed you,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Death smiled, a surprisingly sunny expression on his odd, cadaverous features. He even chuckled softly. “Indeed. How was _that_ supposed to work?”

Dean swallowed, wide-eyed. He’d asked himself the same question countless times.

“Don’t worry,” Death added with that same odd smile. “I don’t hold a grudge. Have you seen it yet, Dean?”

“Seen what?” Sometimes Dean shocked himself with how confident, cocky, unperturbed he could sound—how he could cop an attitude in the literal face of Death. He was a goddamned genius at it.

Death looked at Dean in silence for a long moment. It was disturbingly like Bobby’s look in his dream. Dean looked away, ostensibly to peer around the room. “Where’s Sam?”

“Your brother’s not invited to this soiree, Dean. The guest list is very… exclusive.” Death rose to his feet. “Well. Shall we go? Our docket is rather full tonight. Procrastination is no one’s friend.”

Dean’s instant response should have been to refuse. He should demand more information. He should look for Sam, make sure he was safe… so why did he feel like Death was the person he’d been most desperately looking for, the only person he really wanted to talk to? Why did he simply say, “Where are we going?”

“I’ve got quite a few things to show you.”

Dean didn’t object. He didn’t even grope for a weapon. He simply followed Death out of the hotel room.

Though their hotel room opened onto an interior hallway, when Death opened the door, they walked directly onto the street. It was the cityscape of the dream Dean had just left, only instead of vague, now it was horrifically real. 

It looked like the ugliest sort of post-apocalyptic movie—the kind where urban sprawl had covered and choked the earth before humanity burned itself to the ground. The stench of garbage that visitors to New York got used to was ten times as strong. Piles of scrap metal, bones, greasy rags, and garbage of every description were everywhere. In the distance, buildings burned, and the wind whispered ungodly threats Dean could not quite understand.

“What is this?” he whispered.

“Call it a bit of on the job training. I think you’ve got a really bright future ahead of you, young man.”

Dean’s heart clenched hard. “I’m not—I’m never—”

“Oh, I know we tried this once before, and your failure was miserable. But I have a feeling this time will be different.”

* * * 

Dean could never describe it, later. He remembered, even if he didn’t admit it. It was like Hell that way. It was worse, but it was also—this was the part he’d never be able to explain—beautiful.

It was like falling in love.

There were graves, and grief. There were bedside vigils. There were babies who never cried in weeping mothers’ arms. There was kneeling on blood-pooled pavement, pacing in the corridors of cold, empty houses, and joyous laughter at funerals. 

There was an end.

* * * 

“Dean. Dean! Hey…”

A hard hand shook his shoulder. Dean opened his eyes, and Sam’s face swam into focus. Though the fluorescent light in the room was thin and dim, somehow Sam looked like a riot of color, as though Dean had stepped into Oz from the black and white world of Kansas.

“You OK, man?” There was an unfamiliar flavor to the concern in Sam’s voice, edged almost with panic. Dean realized that his face and the pillow beneath him were drenched with tears.

He sat up and wiped his face. “Yeah,” he said. “Where were you?”

He barely listened as Sam described the day’s activities—visits to hospitals and police stations, dead-ended research, all the usual. He couldn’t seem to really wake up. Colors seemed too bright, Sam’s calm, gentle voice too loud. The world had a hysterical edge. He found himself craving silence, grayness, and… something. Something else.

The oddness faded finally, after Sam asked him for the fifth time if he was really all right, and offered burgers from the bag of fast food he’d brought. Dean felt suddenly, sharply hungry, and as Sam said he’d try at the hospital again tomorrow, and that he was turning in, he devoured all the heavy, awesomely greasy food that was left, thinking of someone else who might appreciate it as he did.

Once he was full, he felt bone-weary. He listened to the whistling of the air conditioner that barely made the room cooler for only a minute or two before he was deeply asleep. He slept without dreams.

* * * 

Sam was on his laptop when he woke. He glanced over as Dean sat up. “Morning,” he said.

Somehow the normality of it—Sam on his laptop, shitty hotel room, fast food wrappers on the table, crick in his neck from sleeping hard on the crummy bed—it all felt like Christmas to Dean. Or the start of summer vacation, if he’d ever had that like a normal kid. Joy. Possibilities.

“Morning,” he grunted. Weirdly, he sounded… like himself. “What’s the word?”

“People are dying again.” Sam sounded sad, but his words lifted Dean’s heart even further.

Sam spoke about it at length. The people in hospice, expected to die days ago, had started peacefully blinking out one by one. The gangster with a hole in his chest had been there one moment and gone the next. Sam thought they should go look at the corpse for good measure, but Dean knew they would learn nothing from it. Even as he spoke, tugging and teasing at the problem, Sam seemed to know too. Sam started smiling a lot, without seeming to notice it, until he said to Dean, “You’re in a good mood. Happy dreams?”

“No. Not even.” But Dean wasn’t sure if that was true. “How about breakfast?”

“Sure. There’s a place around the corner. Then the morgue?” 

“I dunno, Sam. Then maybe home. Not sure I can take that plastic piece of crap rental for much longer. I miss Baby.”

Sam had fully caught his cheerful mood, striding along with a spring in his step. “Maybe we’ll hotwire something with more metal in it and drive back. There really doesn’t seem to be anything to find. For once, you know… maybe everything’s just OK. Maybe no one died for these couple of days because… whatever’s good out there, I don’t know if it’s God—maybe he’s just cutting us a break, you know?”

Dean smiled secretively. When Sam looked over at him curiously, he slapped him on the back and grinned. 

“Maybe, Sam. Maybe he is.”

Breakfast was delicious. Sam seemed happy. The city was lively, smoky, loud, and hot. It teemed with life, while Dean thought, harder than he ever thought, about death.

Death wasn’t the enemy. He never had been. When Dean thought about it, he realized Death had been his friend his whole life, even before he’d met his scary-jovial frenemy and fellow junk-food lover. Death was his enemy too, true. The one he had fought most viciously, using every dirty trick in the book and plenty he’d invented himself. But Death was always there for him when he needed to deal that last blow with the machete to the vampire’s neck, or fill a werewolf full of silver bullets. Death was his greatest ally in his work.

He was mercy, peace, the end. It could be a happy ending or a bloody, sad one, or anything in between, but an end was an end, and maybe, just maybe, there would be peace when he was done.

The End


End file.
